


I Just Want You

by PTomlin



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-08 06:04:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4293540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PTomlin/pseuds/PTomlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short and sweet Christmascookie fic, prompt was gift giving</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> an old, old little fic that never made it off my tumblr (until now)
> 
> (title brought to you by Sara Bareilles)

When she reaches her five hundredth year, North makes all sorts of noise about grand parties and commemorative occasions, but the world in the wake of Pitch Black has grown quiet, and they’ve grown quieter with it, and the center of attention has never been a place with which she was particularly comfortable. She hushes him down, makes several very valid argument to the contrary, and in the end it is just the two of them at the Pole one afternoon in early fall when North pulls her into his office with a giddy smile and a bounce in his step.

“What is it?” she asks, giggling. “North, if you’ve pulled a surprise party despite all I’ve said, I’m going to kill you, you know that, right?”

“Da, da, is not party, do not fret,” he says, closing the door behind them and maneuvering her toward the floor space he wants her to stand on. “Wait here.” He strides to his desk and places his hand atop a rather large object sat upon the wooden surface, and covered with a grey cloth. There is a twinkle in his eye as he grins at her, and with much presentation, whips the cloth away.

In a circular stand upon the desk sits a luminescent glass ball.

“A snowglobe, Nicholas?” she says bemusedly.

“Eh, sort of,” North says, smile never leaving his face. “Very special snowglobe. And yet not.” She raises an eyebrow at him and he rolls his eyes. “Come, come closer, you will see.”

She beats her wings, hop-skipping the short distance to where North stands. The glass is three or four times the size of North’s regular globes, and unornamented. The closer she looks, the less empty it appears, although she can’t seem to make sense of what she sees.

“Look from above,” North instructs, and she presses her hands against the table to lever herself up. The angle is no better at first; cloudy shapes move just beneath her nose, and she squints, frowns, tilts her head. And slowly, as if emerging from a fog, the glass clears. Peering down into its depths, she can see now that it’s filled with–

“Oh, Nicholas.”

A miniature forest spreads out beneath her eyes, filled with colorful shapes that dart and tumble amongst the trees. The detail is exquisite, as if she were truly looking down on the world from above. Tiny leaves sway in a contained breeze, a brook ripples cheerfully down a cascade of stones, and she But it is the creatures that populate this tiny forest that captivate her. Winged elephants, four-armed eagles, sleek, sunned naga and the aponsi she-lions and scaled, fierce-fanged makara, and so many more that she can both name and not name, creatures she had once seen herself, many, many years ago, or had been told about in tales. Stories that her mother would whisper to her at night, legends her father recited as they took walks through the jungle around their tiny cottage. 

“What kind of magic is this,” she says, hushed, awed that such a gift would be bestowed upon her. To be able to look into a piece of her past…

“You like it?” North asks, uncharacteristically shy.

“It’s beautiful,” she assures him. She hesitates only a moment before she hugs him, and feels his moment of hesitation before his arms come up around her, a touch of tension draining away as she rests her head against his wide chest. “Thank you, Nicholas,” she says. There is so much more she wants to say, so much she would say in this moment. This is a gift years in the making, masterfully crafted with magics she had understanding of enough to know that the task was not have been an easy one. This is not a gift idly given, more than would be presented to a comrade in arms, even as close as they have all become. And she had not missed the careful hope in North’s eyes.

But she bites her tongue. For now.

The rules of courtship dictate, after all, that she must first gift him something in return.


	2. Chapter 2

She does not have the hours to spare to gaze into her crystal ball and forget the world. But she wishes she had. That miniature world is constant in her mind, transporting her back, back to a time when the world was old but she wasn’t, yet. When wonders walked the earth and she didn’t know yet, that she was one of them.

She does not let it distract her. She has a job to which she is sworn, and it would not do to shirk her responsibilities. But she sets up the globe in an open space, leaving it open to the light, the air, and the frequent visits that she bestows on it. Every available moment she has, every break between runs, she spares for a glance, a sip, here and there, and each time she sees something new, and familiar. She keeps finding clutches of her fairies clustered around its glossy surface and has given up on scolding them. Her memories are theirs as well, after all, even if these wonders are things which all but a handful of them have not seen with their own eyes.

The other thought that plagues her mind is what she could possible give North in return. She thinks of presenting him with finery, jewels fit for even a bandit king; a book of rare magics from her own personal collection that she knows not even he can yet possess; weapons with mystical properties and bright, keen blades that come to life in the wielders hands; a mantle woven from her own discarded feathers; but she discards all of these in turn. None are sufficient, none quite strike that specific tone that she seeks–that of the memory and wonder, intertwined and so exquisitely balanced in North’s offering to her. 

The crystal offers her no answers, but it does offer her its comfort as option after option is considered and likewise deemed unsuitable.

Until it doesn’t.

When she sees the first Sister her heart nearly stops, and she despairs amidst her ecstasy, knowing she will never be able to find a gift of equal measure to give to North, not now, not after this. She watches one of her own tend lovingly to a winged pachyderm and her chest swells with equal parts joy and sorrow for her mother’s people, and the scant memories she has of them. 

Oh, the man has outdone himself this time. He has thought of everything in this labor of love; he might as well have handed her his heart.

And she realizes, biting her lip against a smile, that this is exactly what he has done.

Well then. She may not have North’s boundless imagination, but she is determined not to be outdone. She will find a fitting reply. There must be something she can give him. Something to equal the mastery and devotion embodied in this work of genius, something that represents the heart of her, in turn. There are options she has not grasped, opportunities she has not plundered, there must be. So she consults the teeth.

In the larger towers at the base of her palace lie the old records, the teeth of those children long departed from this world, but kept, still, because she cannot bear to part with them. Teeth that haven’t been touched for centuries but might, now, be just the help she needs.

She searches through what must be thousands of memories paying her respects to each child as she does; memories, especially ones so old as these, are fragile things, and just because their hosts are gone does not mean she cares for them any less. She lets each memory transport her. She learns, she deliberates. Until she finds the very thing to convey her heart.

In the end, what she chooses is a song. A lullaby, sung to Cossack children of old. Wonder and memory, she thinks. And while she knows that North did not have an orthodox childhood, from the melody’s prevalence in the memories she has consulted, she is willing to take the gamble that he will know it. 

She learns it by memory until it sings itself in the back of her mind like a forgotten memory of her own.

And then she goes to the Pole.

Months have passed while she has prepared, but the Pole looks the same as it ever does in its shroud of eternal winter. She finds North in his office, checking his lists, spectacles resting on the end of his nose. He startles as she enters, and they fall to the table.

“Tooth! Is something wrong?”

“Shh, no, no, everything is fine,” she assures him. “I have something for you.” And suddenly she is anxious, stomach light in a way that makes her feel as if she would float to the stars if she but stirred her feathers. It is not because of the song, nor the performance of it, but because this is the moment that could change everything. She is giving him her heart.

As he has given her his.

The thought steadies her, and as he looks on, a familiar bemused expression on his face, she begins to sing.

“Sleep, my darling, sleep, my child,  
Close your eyes and sleep.  
Darkness comes; into your cradle  
Moonbeams shyly peep.  
Many pretty songs I’ll sing you  
And a lullaby.  
Pleasant dreams the night will bring you…  
Sleep, dear, rock-a-bye.

Muddy waters churn in anger,  
Loud the Terek roars,  
And a Chechen with a dagger  
Leaps onto the shore.  
Steeled your father is in gory  
Battle… You and I,  
Little one, we need not worry…  
Sleep, dear, rock-a-bye.”

She closes her eyes as she sings, lets the music transport her. The song is in its native tongue, but she is her mother’s daughter, and no language is beyond her reach.

“There will come a day when boldly,  
Like your dad, my son,  
You will mount your horse and shoulder,  
Proud, a Cossack gun.  
With bright silks your saddle for you  
I will sew…. There lie  
Roads as yet untrod before you….  
Sleep, dear, rock-a-bye.

You’ll grow up to be a fearless  
Cossack, and a true.  
Off you’ll ride, and I’ll stand tearless,  
Looking after you.  
But when you are gone from sight, son,  
Bitterly I’ll cry….  
May the dreams you dream be light, son;  
Sleep, dear, rock-a-bye.”

She thinks of him as she sings, not of the lonely child he was, but of the man he has made himself into, and of the children he now does his best every year to assure that there is someone out there, looking after them.

“Thoughts of you when we are parted  
All my days will fill.  
In the nighttime, anxious-hearted,  
Pray for you I will.  
I’ll be thinking that you’re lonely,  
That for home you sigh….  
Sleep, my son, my one and only,  
Sleep, dear, rock-a-bye.

I will see you to the turning,  
And you’ll ride away.  
With my icon you will journey  
And before it pray.  
Let your thoughts in time of danger  
To your mother fly.  
Close your eyes and sleep, my angel,  
Sleep, dear, rock-a-bye.”

When she has sung the last notes, she opens her eyes. North is gazing at her with a look that can only be described as longing. There are tears in his eyes. His list is still held frozen in his hand, suspended in time, and she knows that she has accomplished something, here.

“Nicholas…” she says softly.

“Your highness,” he answers in a breath, and the awe in his voice sends a pure, giddy triumph through her. She goes to him, removes the paper from between his fingers and sets it down. Seated, he is nearly on level with her, and she takes the opportunity to trace the smile lines around his eyes, surreptitiously wiping away the lingering tears as she leans comfortably against him.

“Does this mean you accept my affections?” he asks her.

“It does.” She presses a kiss to his forehead and he sighs the sigh of a man who has just received his heart’s desire.

She thinks she might know exactly what that feels like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (The song I chose, if anyone is interested, is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU8rB_Sswdo
> 
> I know it really doesn’t fit chronologically speaking, but I loved the story of it, and I thought it would sound lovely for Tooth’s voice if one were to bump it up an octave. )


End file.
